Wagons East

I'm one of those people that really enjoys my job, now that's not to say that I don't have bad days or that I don't have to do things that I don't want to but for the most part the people I work with are a good group and I enjoy working with them. Unfortunately there are times that my job really sucks and I think I may have hit a low point today. Occasionally my job duties entail people leaving the company, some retire, others quit and on some occasions they get fired. My involvement is pretty minimal, I type a few keys on my computer, remind the supervisor to make sure all the paperwork gets back to me and file things away, it's all very banal. Today though I actually had to sit down and talk to the employee before they left, we moved into a conference room for privacy and they just let it go. Their health had been failing for months because of the stress of the job and things in their personal life. They just couldn’t do it any more, and after talking with their spouse, decided it was the best thing for both of them. As I walked the employee out, they stopped and gave me a hug and said thank you for the things I had done over the years, told me they had a few more months to pack up (they have had their house foreclosed on) and they were hitting the road. “I’m going to hitch up my fifth wheel and we’ll point our wagon’s east”. I waved as I watched the now ex-employee leave the parking lot and wondered if I was going to be one of those people, at the end of my “career” disenchanted with the system on a whole and slightly broken from the experience. Would I just take my husband and the kids and pack up? This person talked about getting over the Sierra’s and into the open, they could hit the cruise control, set the speed to 85 and drive with their knees the rest of the way there, I had been saddened by the loss that they had experienced initially but now that I think about it, I realized the glimmer they had in their eye wasn’t necessarily tears for a loss but also maybe a little bit of adventure. Maybe this could be the turning point for them; a new life that ends’s up a little better. I honestly don’t know but I think I like that idea more than the vision of a slightly banged up and broken person I witnessed walking to their car.